The Stand

Now they both looked stunned. Stunned and astonished.

“You knew about it?” Frannie asked, shaken. “You checked it out?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. It—”

“You’re a liar!” Harold’s voice had gone high and squeaky.

Fran saw an alarming cold flash of anger in Redman’s eyes, then they were brown and mild again. “No. I ain’t.”

“I say you are! I say you’re nothing but a—”

“Harold, you shut up! ”

Harold looked at her, wounded. “But Frannie, how can you believe—”

“How can you be so rude and antagonistic?” she asked hotly. “Will you at least listen to what he has to say, Harold?”

“I don’t trust him.”

Fair enough, Stu thought, that makes us even.

“How can you not trust a man you just met? Really, Harold, you’re being disgusting!”

“Let me tell you how I know,” Stu said quietly. He told an abridged version of the story that began when Campion had crashed into Hap’s pumps. He sketched his escape from Stovington a week ago. Harold glared dully down at his hands, which were plucking up bits of moss and shredding them. But the girl’s face was like an unfolding map of tragic country, and Stu felt bad for her. She had set off with this boy (who, to give him credit, had had a pretty good idea), hoping against hope that there was something of the old taken-for-granted ways left. Well, she had been disappointed. Bitterly so, from her look.

“Atlanta too? The plague got both of them?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and she burst into tears.

He wanted to comfort her, but the boy would not take to that. Harold glanced uncomfortably at Fran, then down at the litter of moss on his cuffs. Stu gave her his handkerchief. She thanked him distractedly, without looking up. Harold glared sullenly at him again, the eyes those of a piggy little boy who wants the whole cookie jar to himself. Ain’t he going to be surprised, Stu thought, when he finds out a girl isn’t a jar of cookies.

When her tears had tapered down to sniffles, she said, “I guess Harold and I owe you our thanks. At least you saved us a long trip with disappointment at the end.”

“You mean you believe him? Just like that? He tells you a big story and you just… you buy it?”

“Harold, why would he lie? For what gain?”

“Well, how do I know what he’s got on his mind?” Harold asked truculently. “Murder, could be. Or rape.”

“I don’t believe in rape myself,” Stu said mildly. “Maybe you know something about it I don’t.”

“Stop it,” Fran said. “Harold, won’t you try not to be so awful?”

“Awful? ” Harold shouted. “I’m trying to watch out for you—us—and that’s so bloodydamn awful? ”

“Look,” Stu said, and brushed his sleeve up. On the inside of his elbow were several healing needle marks and the last remains of a discolored bruise. “They injected me with all kinds of stuff.”

“Maybe you’re a junkie,” Harold said.

Stu rolled his sleeve back down without replying. It was the girl, of course. He had gotten used to the idea of owning her. Well, some girls could be owned and some could not. This one looked like the later type. She was tall and pretty and very fresh-looking. Her dark eyes and hair accentuated a look that could be taken for dewy helplessness. It would be easy to miss that faint line (the I-want line, Stu’s mother had called it) between her eyebrows that became so pronounced when she was put out, the swift capability of her hands, even the forthright way she tossed her hair from her forehead.

“So now what do we do?” she asked, ignoring Harold’s last contribution to the discussion entirely.

“Go on anyway,” Harold said, and when she looked over at him with that line furrowing her brow, he added hastily: “Well, we have to go somewhere. Sure, he’s probably telling the truth, but we could double-check. Then decide what’s next.”

Fran glanced at Stu with an I-don’t-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-but kind of expression. Stu shrugged.

“Okay?” Harold pressed.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Frannie said. She picked up a gone-to-seed dandelion and blew away the fluff.

“You didn’t see anyone at all back the way you came?” Stu asked.

“There was a dog that seemed to be all right. No people.”

“I saw a dog, too.” He told them about Bateman and Kojak. When he had finished he said, “I was going toward the coast, but you saying there aren’t any people back that way kind of takes the wind out of my sails.”

“Sorry,” Harold said, sounding anything but. He stood up. “Ready, Fran?”

She looked at Stu, hesitated, then stood up. “Back to the wonderful diet machine. Thank you for telling us what you know, Mr. Redman, even if the news wasn’t so hot.”

“Just a second,” Stu said, also standing up. He hesitated, wondering again if they were right. The girl was, but the boy surely was seventeen and afflicted with a bad case of the I-hate-most-everybodies. But were there enough people left to pick and choose? Stu thought not.

“I guess we’re both looking for people,” he said. “I’d like to tag along with you, if you’d have me.”

“No,” Harold said instantly.

Fran looked from Harold to Stu, troubled. “Maybe we—”

“You never mind. I say no.”

“Don’t I get a vote?”

“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see he only wants one thing? Christ, Fran!”

“Three’s better than two if there’s trouble,” Stu said, “and I know it’s better than one.”

“No,” Harold repeated. His hand dropped to the butt of his gun.

“Yes,” Fran said. “We’d be glad to have you, Mr. Redman.”

Harold rounded on her, his face angry and hurt. Stu tightened for just a moment, thinking that perhaps he was going to strike her, and then relaxed again. “That’s the way you feel, is it? You were just waiting for some excuse to get rid of me, I get it.” He was so angry that tears had sprung to his eyes, and that made him angrier still. “If that’s the way you want it, okay. You go on with him. I’m done with you.” He stamped off toward where the Hondas were parked.

Frannie looked at Stu with stricken eyes, then turned toward Harold.

“Just a minute,” Stu said. “Stay here, please.”

“Don’t hurt him,” Fran said. “Please.”

Stu trotted toward Harold, who was astride his Honda and trying to start it up. In his anger he had twisted the throttle all the way over and it was a good thing for him it was flooded, Stu thought; if it actually started up with that much throttle, it would rear back on its rear wheel like a unicycle and pile old Harold into the first tree and land on top of him.

“You stay away!” Harold screamed angrily at him, and his hand fell onto the butt of the gun again. Stu put his hand on top of Harold’s, as if they were playing slapjack. He put his other hand on Harold’s arm. Harold’s eyes were very wide, and Stu believed he was only an inch or so from becoming dangerous. He wasn’t just jealous of the girl, that had been a bad oversimplification on his part. His personal dignity was wrapped up in it, and his new image of himself as the girl’s protector. God knew what kind of a fuckup he had been before all of this, with his wad of belly and his pointy-toed boots and his stuck-up way of talking. But underneath the new image was the belief that he was still a fuckup and always would be. Underneath was the certainty that there was no such thing as a fresh start. He would have reacted the same way to Bateman, or to a twelve-year-old kid. In any triangle situation he was going to see himself as the lowest point.

“Harold,” he said, almost into Harold’s ear.

“Let me go.” His heavy body seemed light in its tension; he was thrumming like alive wire.

“Harold, are you sleeping with her?”

Harold’s body gave a shivering jerk and Stu knew he was not.

“None of your business!”